Tuesday, June 24, 2008

If McCain wants to win--and he probably does? I think?--he should pick a less frightening, appealing, experienced woman to be his Vice Presidential running mate. Some names out there are Kay Bailey Hutchinson and Carly Fiorina. Those are kinda on the right track, but wrong.

Here's who he should pick: someone with serious awesome maternal appeal, great name recognition, and a love of dogs: N.C. Senator Elizabeth "My man rocks Viagra and then he rocks my world" Dole.

If McCain does that, then Obama better pick KING RICHARD FUCKING PETTY #43 for his Veep, or he is screwed.

Looking back now, the 2008 Decline of The New York Times Magazine started with this cover story, back on April 27:

Now, the reason this story is odd is NOT that it's about the discovery of some bizarro Suburbagay enclave. THAT story would have been totally amazing. It's odd because it's a big shrugger of a tale. "Young gay men are getting hitched!" And . . . so? It was a buncha anecdotes about young gays getting hitched. No learned sociologists or marriagticians citing stats or anything like that. Nope: just a lotta gays saying: "So: We got married! It was neat."

Was this trying to curry favor with the young gays? With gays in general? With the backyard BBQ lobby? What about the lesbian ladies? What's this all aboot, as they ask up north!

Then came the (hideous!) May 11 cover:This article's unpublished subtitle is: "Unassailable and Terrifying Medical Observations by Bored Suburban Soccer Moms and Michael Sokolove." Basically, this whiny screed warned an unsuspecting America that its precious girls shouldn't be allowed to play the very sports so many women have fought to get recognized and organized because . . . the girls . . . might get . . . hurt. And DEAR JEEBUS we need to protect our precious Ashleighs and Madisons from the big scary world so many women had to battle and skirmish and endure and finesse their way into being a barely equal part of. (I'm ending on a preposition, but fuck it.) Won't someone think of the poor, privileged white people!??!?!? (*This is a new Times meme). More horrifying: the article is but a foul excerpt from an entire tome of fear and idiocy entitled Warrior Girls: Protecting Our Daughters Against the Injury Epidemic in Women’s Sports. To which I am sure as shit not linking.

Yet the people of Real America did not let me down: A lot of actual women spoke up and wrote that (I'm paraphrasing here) they kinda liked playing sports, and understood about injuries, and it would be great if they could be minimized, and thank you very much but go fuck yourself.

So! Perhaps this backlash would alert the Times magazine pashas that the magazine was wobbling toward punchline status! Perhaps this would make them take note and steer away from the Approaching Iceberg of Smug, Cold, Hull-Breaching Disaster!

Or not.

They had to suspend online comments on this gem early because of the wicked smackdowns that America's Top Commenters dropped on Ms. Emily Gould (pictured), who revealed through her massive overshares why people don't like her so much. (Nice work, America!) Herewith, the letters they eventually published, which will summarize the article's gist better than I can. (Sample words/phrases from letter writers: smugness, painful karmic retribution, small-minded blog culture, acute self-involvement, self-absorption, immature and childish gossiping and self-reporting, egomaniacs publishing their banal maundering, navel-gazing young adulthood, thoughtless gossip.)

Last year I left Princeton for a professorship in Seoul, even though I don’t speak Korean and most Koreans don’t really speak English, except my students, who speak as many as four languages and who bow to me when they walk by on campus.

Oh, the wacky misunderstandings this must create!

This object of Korean embowment teaches "creative writing at Yonsei University’s Underwood International College in Seoul," according to the blurb at the bottom. And from his writing, it becomes clear rather quickly that when he says he "left Princeton," he may have just been referring to the quaint New Jersey town. Cause this cracker can't write.

Here are three examples of the author's bon mots:

Step on the street and be prepared to get mowed down by a sea of men in pinstripe suits and women dressed to the nines. To survive on the street, you have to master something I call the Seoul ballet.

The food came, and our chopsticks began to fly with joy.

Our chopsticks will be flying.

I won't even go into how he blathers on about his hot mini-skirted Korean girlfriend, who is quite possibly as fictional as the author's undefined job at Princeton. Because there's a bit about how (probably not-real) drunk Korean men come up and talk shit to this imaginary girlfriend about dating a (real) talentless American wienerpants, and how he is so restrained and evolved that he doesn't step to on these imaginary oafs. So you should bow to Gabe "Flying Chopsticks" Hudson! Or hit on his imaginary hottie Korean girlfriend, because apparently he's a big pussy about shit like that.

"Lives" is generally top-notch. Never really even below a B-, in my opinion. But this one was an F. The barrel is that empty? Come on, people.

Saturday, June 21, 2008

Friday, June 20, 2008

Washington, D.C.: Please Dana, enough Tim Russert! Does "official Washington" realize that half of Iowa is underwater and more than one person has suffered and died in that awful mess? We have the worst natural disaster in years in the Midwest, and yet our "news" 24-7 is about a journalist who -- while maybe a beloved figure in Washington power circles -- remains unknown to most of the world.

Dana Milbank: There's flooding in Iowa? All I know about recent meteorological events is there was a terrific rainbow over Washington after the Russert memorial.

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Undead in Dead Island are mostly zombified tourists. That should answer your question about German zombies and pretty much all other nationalities that are likely to visit a holiday paradise on a Pacific island.

Rock Band: works great, fun for parties, I even did Endless Setlist. But it needs some more awesome songs (and NOT JimmyFuckingBuffett), especially after some beers. It needs some real blitzkreigy stadium rock anthems that everyone over 25 knows.

Think--people would actually fight to be the singer, which never, ever happens. Look at these six kickass titles.

Bohemian Rhapsody

We Will Rock You/We Are The Champions

Under Pressure (with Bowie, who is already on RB profusely)

Fat Bottom Girls

Killer Queen

Another One Bites The Dust

So: where's the Queen? Seems odd, doesn't it? They're PERFECT for this thing. One theory (from Mink) is that someone is sitting on the video game rights . . . and oddly, it might be EA, which publishes Harmonix, who doth maketh thee Rock Band (Harmonix is an MTV property).

In conjunction with Electronic Arts, Queen released the computer game Queen: The Eye in 1998, to commercial and critical failure. The music itself — tracks from Queen's vast catalogue, in many cases remixed into new instrumental versions — was by and large well received, but the game experience was hampered by poor game play. Adding to the problem was an extremely long development time, resulting in graphic elements that already seemed outdated by the time of release.

The soundtrack for The Eye (box shots here) has some "The Game"-era tunes and a few others of note, but really, none of the megahits. Maybe EA lost the rights to some weird now-defunct subsidiary publisher/developer?

Let's get this straightened out. Let's get Queen in The Game (Get it? Oh man I kill me).

Monday, June 2, 2008

Sunday, June 1, 2008

The Manny Ramirez Stat Ticker: Two dropped balls, one HR (#500). Camden Yards, Saturday night, and the joint was overrun with honky red-necked arriviste Red Sox Nation goons and their quaint green Sox caps and pink T-shirts and man I think I might actually start liking Yankees fans. At least they don't act like the desperate guy who finally scored with a real girl and can't stop talking about it. The number of hats and T-shirts festooned with WORLD CHAMPIONS language was embarrassing. Grow up. PS Go Lakers.

Anyway, Manny: Never has one person been so inept and so gifted in one corporeal entity. When he starts to run to catch a ball, it's like he starts thinking about carrots or loafers or pencils or . . . who knows. He will probably be the first player in the National Baseball Hall of Fame who cannot actually catch a baseball more than 20% of the time. I hear the Red Sox are trying to install a new rule in the AL for two DHs so Manny and Ortiz can both play every game without getting near a glove.

When I asked his teammate David Ortiz, himself a borderline folk hero, how he would describe Ramirez, he replied, “As a crazy motherfucker.” Then he pointed at my notebook and said, “You can write it down just like that: ‘David Ortiz says Manny is a crazy motherfucker.’ That guy, he’s in his own world, on his own planet. Totally different human being than everyone else.” Ortiz is not alone in emphasizing that Ramirez’s originality resonates at the level of species. Another teammate, Julian Tavarez, recently told a reporter from the Boston Herald, “There’s a bunch of humans out here, but to Manny, he’s the only human.”

Also:

But for some reason I have not seen it remarked upon that Ramirez chose to name both of his first two sons Manny, Jr.